Lucky shot? Man injured at Club Life thankful for bullet

Richard Prescott says he doesn't remember much about the night he was shot outside a Hilton Head Island bar on New Year's Day, but he does see the nearly fatal event as saving his life.

The 23-year-old Hardeeville man chalks up his being shot outside Club Life, 81 Pope Ave., to a combination of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and divine intervention.

"Everything was there for me," he said. "The ambulance driver rushing me to the hospital, and then being helicoptered to Savannah. Doctors said I wasn't supposed to make it, but God and the people praying for me got me through it quicker than anybody could have thought."

He was released Wednesday from Savannah's Memorial Health University Medical Center. He is expected to make a full recovery, but will have months of painful therapy to re-learn to walk unassisted and regain full use of his left arm. The bullet remains lodged in his neck. Removing it could lead to paralysis because it is imbedded in bone near his spinal cord.

Deputies believe Prescott and the shooter fought inside Club Life earlier that night. Prescott says he doesn't remember anything that happened during his first trip to the south-island nightclub.

He doesn't remember the club being evacuated because of a fight, and he doesn't remember standing outside and getting shot, he says. His first memory starts the next day in the hospital. Doctors told him he had a bullet lodged in his C4 vertebrae. He had a ventilator tube in his throat.

Prescott is a truck driver for a beer distributor. Before the shooting, he would wake up at 5 a.m. for his 12-hour shift. He started the job to help support his now 4-month-old daughter, Kamya, he said. The schedule forced him to drop out of the Technical College of the Lowcountry.

"Who would have thought? When I was walking around I had no time. Now that I'm in a wheelchair, I've got plenty of time," he said. "I have more time to be with my daughter, and I'm going to go back to school to study computer programming."

His mother, Mary Prescott, is happy to see the change in her son and hopes his experience can be a lesson to others.

"Idle time is jail time," she said. "We've got to make sure our kids have something good to do with their time so they stay safe."

She wishes no ill will toward the gunman, but hopes to one day speak with his mother.

"She's a mother, I'm a mother, and I just want to let her know that I hope her son gets all the help he needs," she said. "He'll have to do the time for the crime, but I hope he finds whatever he is looking for."

Cpl. Robin McIntosh, spokeswoman for the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office, said investigators don't know if the shooting that injured Prescott and a drive-by shooting at Club Life three hours later are related. No new information on the case was available Thursday, and no arrests have been made.

The Prescott family said they hope someone is arrested, but they're more interested in Richard Prescott's recovery.

As to the bullet, Prescott says, it will be a reminder not of his near-death experience but a daily affirmation of his new life.

"I'm blessed, and I hope the man that did this to me is blessed, too," Prescott said. "I want him to know I'm not mad. I just hope God touches him like he has me. God will do the judging, not me."